Main menu

You are here

Boys Road Patrol

by H. G. Jones, 2006

The Boys Road Patrol was chartered by the General Assembly in 1915 under the aegis of J. Hampton Rich "to look after the maintenance of the stretch of road indigenous to each member of the patrol, dragging and ditching same by the use of machinery placed in the care of the patrol by the State and county." For ten years the program fell under the Department of Agriculture, but in 1925 it was transferred to the State Board of Education. It apparently was most active in Forsyth and Davie Counties, where Rich personally directed the work. Before paved roads, the patrol, with the slogan "A Boy on Every Mile," helped keep country roads dragged and drained. A simple road drag formed the patrol's seal. With the advent of improved roads in the 1930s, the organization (in essence, Rich himself) preached traffic and pedestrian safety.